3rd Sunday Lent A - Homily 3

Homily 3 – 2011 

Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well.  It was about noon.  A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman, of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)

What is John wanting to alert us to? Essentially, that Jesus is not into exclusion.  In the accepted estimation, this person was excluded on two counts: she was a woman, and she was a Samaritan.  Jesus excludes no one from the reach of his concern and love.  For him, there are no insiders or outsiders.  Is that relevant to Australia as we wrestle with the place of women in society and issues like who can be Australian and who cannot? 

Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’  The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?  Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water,  so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

Later in the Gospel, Jesus will speak again about “living water”, and the Gospel will make clear that what Jesus was referring to was the Spirit, that is, the love of God, indeed, the love of Jesus, as experienced by us.  The love of God, the love of Jesus, according to the Gospel, can gush up within us like a spring, quenching our own thirst, and pour out from us to refresh the thirst of those we encounter.  A problem is that we need to feel our inner thirst.  It’s there – deep within the hearts of all of us – that thirst to matter, to feel secure, ultimately, to be loved.  But in our affluent world, we try so often instead, to fill the emptiness with distraction, entertainment, new experiences, travel, consumerism.  And so many finish up so unhappy.

The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet.  Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’   Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. [You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.]  But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’

True worship is not about where.  It is not about rituals, language and gestures – though these things can help us or annoy us.  Not long before, Jesus had claimed that his own risen body would be the new temple.  Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.  People would access God through the risen crucified humanity of Jesus, through being truly and ever-more-deeply christened.  But, as Jesus said, that is a question of spirit and truth.  Hebrew prophets has consistently criticised the nation for splitting worship and life style.  Worship, our relating to God, is expressed in practice in the ways we relate to each other: Hear them what Yahweh asks of you: to live justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God.  We learn true justice, true love, true humility from making our own the way of Jesus: a life style that is not exclusive, that loves spontaneously before anything else, that is prepared to be victimised by those who do not understand. At the same time, our motivation for justice, for compassion and for humility comes from our search for God, is fed from our thirst for God, and draws any genuine transformative power it might have from the love of God, the Spirit of Jesus, that bubbles up and gushes forth from us.  

Over the coming months, we shall be expected to adopt new translations for the prayers of the Mass, and for the answers you make, etc.  They may help some.  They will annoy me.  But let us keep our priorities clear.  It would be tragic to burn up energy arguing about language when what matters is true worship in spirit and in truth – how we connect worship and life, how we see our worship conditioning our practical living out, in this real world with its questions and issues, the nitty-gritty of justice, love and humility, or, as Jesus put it in the Beatitudes, of mercy, purity of heart and peace-making.

The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’  Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’  

A wonderful comment from the nameless woman: Jesus had reached out to her warmly.  He had treated her as adult and as equal.  He had listened to her.  And her experience of that was simply: Here is someone who has understood me, who has helped me to understand myself, who has enabled me to see in a new and transformed way all I have ever done.

So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days.  And many more believed because of his word. 

The nameless, customarily excluded woman became the first apostle. She led her compatriots to Jesus, and then sensitively stepped back, allowing them to hear him directly.

They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.’

The Samaritans’ act of faith was wonderful.  These were outsiders, despised by the religious Jews, ignorant and sinners.  Not only did they recognise Jesus as Saviour, but saw that his saving power reached out to all: he was truly the Saviour of the world.